How to Change Mac Snow Leopard Display Preferences

The Displays preferences on Mac OX S control the resolutions of graphics on your Mac and calibrate the colors you see on your monitor. To access these settings, you open System Preferences by clicking the gear icon in the Dock. Then you choose the Hardware tab and click Displays.

Configure your Mac’s display settings from this pane.

The two tabs here are

Display: Click the resolution that you want to use from the Resolutions list on the left and then choose the number of colors (from the Colors pop-up menu) to display. In most cases, you want to use the highest resolution and the highest number of colors.

You can also choose a refresh rate (from the, ahem, Refresh Rate pop-up menu). Again, generally the higher the refresh rate, the better. Move the Brightness slider to adjust the brightness level of your display. (Note that these settings are different depending on what type of display you’re using. For example, a Mac with a CRT monitor has more settings to choose from than a flat-panel LCD system.)

Color: Click a display color profile that will control the colors on your monitor. To load a profile, click the Open Profile button. To create a custom ColorSync profile and calibrate the colors that you see on your monitor, click the Calibrate button to launch the Display Calibrator. (You can also launch it from your Utilities folder within your Applications folder.) This easy-to-use assistant walks you step-by-step through the process of creating a ColorSync profile matched to your monitor’s gamma and white-point values.